What Apple Did

So, I was mostly right and somewhat wrong:

AppleTV refresh — wrong. Of course if Apple really is working on a TV and/or licensing negotiations with HBO, CBS, Amazon, or whoever, then perhaps any movement in AppleTV world would justify its own event.

Mavericks — correct. (Free was a nice surprise.)

Macbook Pros — correct. (Lower prices were a nice surprise.) Note that the non-retina MBP 13″ remains on sale — it’s slightly cheaper than the entry-level retina MBP, but appears not to be Haswell-based.

Mac Mini — wrong. (Well, I did say 50/50.) The Mac Mini is now the only Mac still with Intel HD Graphics 4000.

Mac Pro — correct. (And correct again on it being unattractive on release — more expensive than expected, and no expansion or upgrade options laid out.) The tech specs sheet is confusing — appearing to imply that there are two distinct Mac Pro chassis options, but upon inspection there’s only one, but they don’t let you configure the cheaper model beyond the specification of the more expensive model.

10″ iPad — correct. I did not predict, but was surprised by the lack of 802.11ac, but I’m not exactly sure what MIMO is. It’s odd to me that there were several mentions of MIMO (which seems to be a component of 802.11ac) but that some of the new products are reported as having MIMO (but no 802.11ac) and others as having 802.11ac (but no reference to MIMO).

8″ iPad — correct. Again, retina + A7 is what I predicted, but I kind of more-than-half expected to be disappointed.

iPod Touch Gen 6 — wrong. Indeed, no iPod announcements.

Surprises

1lb (453g). The new iPad (“iPad Air”) is amazingly light. (Does the new name hint that an iPad Pro is coming out? Why yes it does.) This means that an iPad Air along with a third party keyboard might easily weigh about as much as the previous generation iPad. (Note that the new Retina Mini is a tad heavier than its predecessor at 331g vs 308g.)

iPad 2 remains on sale. (Looks like the iPad 2 remains the baseline iPad configuration for another year — note that the original Mac Mini, which remains on sale for $299, is essentially an iPad 2.)

(The iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S are the only products Apple still sells that use the old dock connector. It’s interesting that Apple doesn’t just switch over to the new connector across the board.)

iWork and iLife revisions. I’m not sure if the Mac versions have received much love. I didn’t actually see the live stream (I watched Ars Technica’s Live Blog), but as far as I can tell it’s the iOS versions of the iWork apps that have received the most attention.

iBooks for iOS is still rocking a wooden icon, but iBooks on the Mac has a new iOS7-ish icon. Meanwhile it seems that the iWork apps on the Mac have new icons that look neither Mac- nor iOS7-like, while the iOS versions are iOS7-ish (and pretty lame in the case of Pages and Numbers).